Virtex Family FPGAs Have Advantages That ASICs Can't Offer

Getting your product to customers first means everything in today's fast moving global markets. It is increasingly difficult to achieve, especially in an era where chip design is growing in density and complexity.

Xilinx' traditional strength of providing quick-time-to-market becomes ever more valuable when product cycles shrink from years to months.

Responding quickly to customer needs requires a solution that is flexible. Choosing an inflexible technology increases risk. When things don't go perfectly in the development phase, time, money and engineering resources are wasted. FPGAs are flexible and forgiving. They are engineered for optimal performance by Xilinx, so customers can concentrate on innovation instead of physical design debugging.

Compared to an ASIC flow, FPGA design methodology is straightforward, with no vendor hand-offs for place and route. There are never agonizing waits for prototype fabrication. Xilinx tools are tightly integrated, state-of-the-art, and they're fast.

Increasingly, the most successful companies in the world are choosing Virtex FPGAs as a strategic alternative to ASICs. Densities to 5M systems gates, embedded RAM, critical cores and fast Select I/O allow these market leaders to use Virtex in systems previously planned for ASIC. "Time-to-market with flexibility" enables them to win.